Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving — I hope you get to spend the day enjoying the company of your family/friends. Circumstances may not always be like we want them to be, but still, there are things for which we can be thankful. I can think of one right now — your eyes/eyesight. I HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A SAFE AND VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Having lived in other countries in the past, one thing I know is that you adapt. You obey their rules and you (learn to) speak their language. If you didn’t like it you didn’t have to live there. In the United States we celebrate Christmas. However, somewhere along the way someone decided that saying Merry Christmas would offend others who live in this country and do not call their celebration Christmas. Come on now, don’t you think that is just a bit too sensitive. I like saying Merry Christmas and sending Christmas cards, and after a lifetime of saying Merry Christmas, saying Happy Holidays just doesn’t feel right.

Life can be so serious at times. We know we should count our blessings instead of focusing on what we don’t have. One of the things I’m thankful for is the gift of laughter. Laughter lightens my mood and just makes me feel good all over, plus I hear laughter is good for your health. Check out the articles below the video to learn more about the benefits of laughter. So, when is the last time you had a good laugh? I saw this video years ago and it mad me laugh. Hope it will at least make you smile.

The longer I live the more I appreciate my mother. As a wife and mother, there have been times when I felt underappreciated, taken for granted, and felt like I’m just the fix it and clean it up person. Yeah I know, right now some of you are probably thinking… “Welcome to my world.” It’s during some of those times when I felt the most frustrated that a little voice in my head would say “This is probably how mom felt. Wow! She never let on. She did everything without complaining.” Just having that thought prevents me from having a pity party, and it is moments like that that make me appreciate her all the more. I am truly amazed by my mother. Maybe it takes being a mom to really recognize and appreciate the many, many, many things our mothers did (and maybe even still do) for us. So for mom’s everywhere, these videos are especially for your viewing pleasure:

The Mom Song(what a mom would say in a 24 hour period condensed down to 2:55 minutes)

“Some are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same; and most mothers kiss and scold together.” – Pearl S. Buck

Mommy Rhapsody(NOTE: You will see the performers appear in the video at the 10 second mark)

To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world.” –Brandi Snyder

“Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.” –Author unknown

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.” –Ellen Goodman

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” –Rumi

“Lust fades, so you’d better be with someone who can stand you.” —Alan Zweibel and Jessie Nelson, The Story of Us

“All love shifts and changes. I don’t know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time.” –Julie Andrews

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire: In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.” –Bruce Lee

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” — Eden Ahbez

“Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.” —-Erich Fromm

“Find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will lie under the stars and listen to your heartbeat, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep… wait for the boy who kisses your forehead, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who holds your hand in front of his friends, who thinks you’ re just as pretty without makeup on. One who is constantly reminding you of how much he cares and how lucky he is to have YOU… The one who turns to his friends and says, thats her… ” — Unknown

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” –Henry David Thoreau

“The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.” –Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960

“Love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image… otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” –Author Unknown

“Love is more than a noun — it is a verb; it is more than a feeling — it is caring, sharing, helping, sacrificing.” –William Arthur Ward

“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.” –Marilyn Monroe

“Love is not a feeling. Love is an action, an activity. . .Genuine love implies commitment and the exercise of wisdom. . . . love as the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth…..true love is an act of will that often transcends ephemeral feelings of love or cathexis, it is correct to say, ‘Love is as love does’.” –M. Scott Peck

Spread love everywhere you go:
first of all in your own home.
Give love to your children, to a wife
or husband, to a next-door neighbor.
–Mother Teresa

Every New Year’s Eve people in the U.S. sing this song — Auld Lang Syne. Many of us don’t even know the words to the whole song — me included, so we get creative in our sober or liquor-induced state and make up our own words. But what do those words actually mean?

“Basically, the words “auld lang syne” translate into “for days past,” “days gone by,” or “for the sake of old times,” depending on whom you ask. But no matter what the literal translation is, the sentiment is the same. It’s a song that aims to honor the good old days on a night that’s all about ringing in the new.”